


Moran Family Values

by Shayvaalski



Series: The Kids Are Alright [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Ficlet Collection, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Kid Fic, Mental Health Issues, Minor Violence, Multi, Not all of the characters tagged have shown up yet but they will, Oh My God, Parentlock, Parents & Children, Post Reichenbach, Series, Snapshots, moran family values, seb moran: minder of highly sensitive people, the kids are alright, warnings for seriously twisted children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-06 21:33:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of snippets, "deleted" scenes, and prompt-fics for the Running in the Family universe, mostly concerning the Morans. Ongoing. Many are tied to specific pieces of art, which will be linked to in the chapter notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hook and Eye

Siobhan rarely looks directly at Tommy. 

It’s not that she can’t, or won’t, it’s just that she doesn’t and he’s really just fine with that. After ten years there’s no need; the tilt of her chin, the line of her hip and the angle of her wrist tell him more than that dark mad familiar gaze ever could. Moriarty eyes are by definition unreadable, even by Morans, and so it’s her body he relies on; and of course Siobhan doesn’t need to glance at him to know where he is. 

Because Tommy is always going to be right there, behind her, fingers just brushing the nape of her tense and slender neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Analie (timeforbees) draws the best Siobhan.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/24412204570/timeforbees-shayvaalski-and-andthebluestblues)
> 
>  
> 
> Tags from tumblr:
> 
> _they are nothing like Jim and Seb  
>  they are exactly like Jim and Seb _
> 
>    
>  _you fit into me  
>  like a hook into an eye  
> a fish hook  
> an open eye_


	2. Minor Position

She expects to hate him, and the strangest thing in the whole long month after arriving in London is that she doesn’t. There are days that she wants to, when she can feel Mycroft watching her from across the room as she flickers through computer screens, dismantling strands of the web, but Siobhan can never quite get up enough of a rage to do so. He is not kind, or not exactly, but he does not look at her with fear and that is new enough to distract her. 

Mycroft reminds her, some days, of mum, but with a steadiness mum could never manage, a chilled calm that does more to ease the transition back from Siobhan Moriarty to Siobhan Moran than anything else. 

 _My dear_ , he said to her without any intonation other than a mild interest, the first time they met, _You can be much more than this_. It feels like a long time ago now, spring day in Dalkey with the sun just getting warm, dad thin-lipped and tense on the couch, Tommy solid behind her right shoulder and Mycroft languid in mum’s favorite chair, waiting for an answer.

And it’s not like mum had been in any fit state to object.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Siobhan as a young professional from [this post, written off fanart of femme Moriarty by cjludd.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/23909746333/cjludd-moriarty-makes-for-a-pretty-hot-girl)
> 
>  
> 
> _and oh honey  
>  you should see her in a minor position in the british government_


	3. Flatmate

They move in together after Uni, her and Tommy, into one of the flats mum holds all across London; it’s one of the fanciest places Siobhan has ever seen, and she spends the next week systematically wrecking it. Change is easier at twenty than at twelve, but it still leaves her gasping and shuddering, on her knees with one arm twisted up behind her back, Tommy murmuring in Irish, reassuring and nonsensical.

It gets better, as Siobhan gets more comfortable in the new space, relaxes enough to not spend every moment on edge—although she suspects, standing in the bathroom door dripping wet and mostly naked, that Tommy now has a very good argument about why it’s gotten a good deal worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [this post](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/23445253001/cjludd-saturday-afternoons-at-moriartys), written off a femme Moriarty drawing by cjludd.
> 
> _here's the thing about Siobhan  
>  she does in fact have a sense of humor!   
> it's just not a sense that anyone else enjoys   
> except her mum maybe   
> she does this to Tommy all the time   
> (he finds it exasperating)_


	4. Dynamics of Asteroids

Siobhan at fifteen is thin and thoughtful and very, very close to her mum. Tommy watches them, sometimes, from behind the kind of terrible crime novel that it doesn’t matter if you lose your place in because it all sounds the same, watches the way Jim shifts his weight and Siobhan echoes it without noticing. She flips a knife, blade to handle, handle to blade, deep in a conversation about connective tissues or synaptic reactions, computer circuitry or the dynamics of an asteroid, and Jim’s fingers begin twitching as he listens, and soon they are both tempting bloodied hands and Tommy’s getting tense. 

But he never moves to take the knives. Siobhan and her mum burn (her cold and distant, him with a raging heat) and even when Jim is hissing quietly and Siobhan is starting to tap restlessly against the table (because they feed on each other, an echo growing louder instead of more soft), Tommy stays in his seat. After a while, Sebastian always wanders in and says or does something careful and considered (Seb’s been doing this a long time, and he knows what to do), and all of Jim’s anger and fire focuses in on him, and Tommy takes Siobhan’s arm and pulls her outside so that they are no longer vibrating against each other. 

It would be easier, thinks Tommy, if there were only one of them, but Jim is the blood in Siobhan’s veins and the breath in her lungs; they are close in a way he has no words for, a closeness he cannot imagine having with his parents, or even with Sebastian. 

Tommy wonders, sometimes, watching them together, what it will be like when Jim is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [this post](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/23422910891/siobhan-at-fifteen-is-thin-and-thoughtful-and). Written off fanart by cjludd.


	5. Keeping Mum

He still knows Siobhan. 

Seb takes a kind of painful comfort in this, when his daughter comes home from London every other month looking harassed and adult, Tommy a tall well-dressed shadow leaning against the wall behind her. It takes Jim a minute, takes Siobhan putting a pale hand up to his face and saying,  _Mum_ , but he always knows her. 

It’s still hard to watch, the way Jim grips her wrist as if he can keep himself present by holding on to her, the sudden increase of tension in the muscles of Siobhan’s neck, the closest their daughter will ever come to tears. 

Sometimes Sebastian thinks he cannot bear it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/23337119528/sherlockaged-2-100-photos-of-andrew-scott-3>This%20post.</a>%0A%0A<i>after%20Mycroft%20brings%20her%20into%20the%20fold%20%0Abut%20before%20Molly%20Holmes</i></myroot>)


	6. Team Player

There are days that Holmes forgets to be wary of Moran, with her brown eyes and small clever smile, when they are working together on something complicated and dangerous and bloody brilliant, the team tense and ready at their backs, and then Siobhan laughs high and mad and gleeful and Molly remembers who she really is. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _thirty years in the future  
>  Siobhan comes in on the bass line_
> 
> [This post. Brilliant fanvid.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/23072697236/mustbesoboring-wow-okay-there-are-days-that)


	7. Alternate Universe #1

Siobhan calls him cousin and lets him believe he is in charge. She has no interest in forming her own network at uni, the way Jamie does—mum has made it quietly but terribly clear that in perhaps five years Siobhan will hold the reins to the family business in her hands—but she is willing, sometimes, to go along with his plans and machinations, just to see where they go and what use she might put them to, later.

  
It’s no skin off her back, or Tommy’s, and Siobhan likes the practice she gets in, tracing thin red lines down heaving chests and sides (humans move just like animals, she finds, but the noises are different, more frantic and less easy to interpret, and by the time she finishes or Jamie pulls her off Siobhan is always panting like she’s run a race, eyes dark and wild, and that’s never happened with the snared hares and rabbits), likes the challenge of keeping herself circumspect and safe and unsuspected, half-enjoys working with someone who is almost, but not quite, her equal. 

  
And then there’s the fact that Jamesy’s blood. He’s not Moriarty (intangible hiss and strike and groan, movements like something not quite human, tremor through the shoulders and a high bubbling laugh and a manic brilliance that surpasses words) but he’s kin in a way that she recognizes. Something about the eyes, maybe, or the restless shove of his fingers through light brown hair, or the way he doesn’t flinch when she lays her hand flat against his chest and purrs, or the tone of his voice when he says _Hey, Bonnie._

  
And mum has taught Siobhan about the things one owes to blood.

  
So she calls Jamie cousin, and lets him believe (for a while, just until uni ends and she’s out in the underworld for real this time, Moriarty’s little girl) that he’s the one in charge.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A writer’s note: Jamie Hooper is not part of the canonical Running in the Family timeline. He belongs to the OP. My Jim probably never slept with Molly; Bhan has no kin that matter outside of mum and dad and Tommy. But Comic and I keep running into each other with these two on Omegle (seriously: three times now) and I’m more than willing to write [ _jesus christ I think I just wrote ANOTHER alt universe for my own crack fanfic_](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/22949921598/hey-sorry-to-pester-you-with-a-prompt-thing-but-could)


	8. Jimmy Moran

Jim dresses the part but never fits it quite right.

He walks Siobhan to school every day.  _Every_  day, except for two when she is eight and one when she is nine and six (blurred and bloody and overglossed with mania) when she is ten. She seems to enjoy it, and even when he stops picking her up because it makes the teachers nervous and also Siobhan is her own woman even before she grows into her thin hips and long neck, Jim still walks her down to school. 

Jim is a writer, eccentric fellow in gray cardigans and lavender shirts, and his boyfriend (lover? husband? partner or bodyguard or PA?) is tall and blond and follows him in an absent way when they go down into Dalkey. 

He never touches the O’Doyle boy, even though Siobhan curls her slender fingers around Tommy’s wrist at least twice a day and Sebastian ruffles his hair; Jim knows what belongs to him, and what doesn’t. 

There is something about Jim’s smile that upsets almost everyone in town.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _who let this man have a child_
> 
> [Posted here.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/22628574175/jim-dresses-the-part-but-never-fits-it-quite)


	9. Truth and Consequences

They let Jim come home for Easter, under supervision. Siobhan comes home too, all the way from London, where she is sharing a flat with Tommy and his latest boyfriend and working for Mycroft sixteen hours a day. 

She watches her father’s face as he covers mum’s hands with his own, chest against Jim’s back, guiding him through patterning the egg with wax and crayon, dipping it in dyes colored blood red and bruise purple. Seb looks old, and tired, and still very much in love. 

None of them speak to the tall black woman who is mum’s caseworker or the solidly-built man who is clearly there to prevent whatever violence Jim might do. Tommy puts them in the living room, hands around silent cups of tea, and closes the door to the kitchen. 

Siobhan touches the back of her mum’s neck, the receding line of his hair, blinks down her own violence, her own anger. 

It won’t help, anyway.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight AU, though possibly canon-accurate; I'll let you know.
> 
> [This post, from fanart by yaahoooo.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/20714697755/yaahoooo-7ns-yaahoooo-youre-not-here-to)


	10. Gay Pirates

Teenaged Siobhan, who has much more of a sense of humor once she gets a bit older, keeps a recording of this cued up to play for when Seb tries to interrupt her while she’s working. He inevitably forgets why he even came in her room, since he is too busy despairing of his life choices and wondering why he lives with  _two_ of them.

 

(Jim put her up to it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Off the Cosmo Jarvis song.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/20193362451/ahcookiemonstah-the-top-comment-on-here-oh)
> 
> Told you she has a sense of humor. 
> 
> _there is nothing i cannot make into a fanfiction_


	11. Dinner #1

It’s not that grocery stores disagree with Jim, or that he behaves with particular violence, it’s just that Seb gets so tired of things being snuck into his cart and rearranged on shelves and Jim just fuckin’  _giggles_  so now he has to stay home and Seb and Siobhan have father-daughter time picking out what to make for dinner instead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _my headcanon infects other people like a virus_
> 
> [Here.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/19993433232/atrickstertype-seb-seb-put-the-camera)


	12. Kidnapped

The year Siobhan is nine is not a good one for Sebastian. She seems, at the beginning of it, to be settling down—it’s getting rarer to find her curled up in strange places around the house, and he hasn’t gotten a call from the school in three weeks. But it gets worse, later, her thin chest heaving as she struggles against Tommy’s hands on her shoulders, Seb’s grip firm on her wrists. Jim isn’t much help, because he’s in a bad way too, preoccupied, his outbursts rare but so explosive when they do come that Sebastian sends his daughter and Tommy not just out of the house, but all the way down into town, with strict instructions to see a movie or get dinner or bug Ailish— _Christ,_ Bhan, three hours? Four? I’m not sure, yeah? As long as you can.

Tommy, eleven, does his best, and truth be told what happens when she’s nine years and two hundred seventeen days isn’t really his fault—not even a teenager yet, not quite part of the family, he can’t be held to it. Jim lurches forward, right when they find out (Tommy half-hysterical, blond hair a flyaway mess like his fingers have been clenched in it, bruised, his nose bloodied,  _they didn’t want me, they wanted her, I couldn’t stop them)_ , but Seb’s hand snaps out and slams into his chest and everyone is still. 

It takes an entire day, twenty four hours and seventeen minutes and five seconds, to find her. Jim doesn’t sleep for any of it, calling in every single favor he has to call, making threats and bribes and phone calls, and Seb waits and paces and never lets go of his gun and Tommy sits with his forehead on his knees and his hands on the back of his neck and in the end the kidnappers phone them at four in the afternoon and ask to speak to Jim.

Seven minutes later the three of them are moving.

Jim pays the money without even blinking, and the tattooed woman who heads the group takes it, shoves it in her bag without even counting the crisp new bills, and all but throws Siobhan (who is dark-eyed and unbothered and settles into her usual place beside Seb’s right hip, Tommy at her shoulder, without the slightest indication that the situation is at all strange) at Jim. Jim laughs, low and cruel, and the woman is already turning to flee. Seb lifts his rifle but a hand on the barrel stops him,  _No, tiger, let them go_. 

It’s years before Sebastian works out that Jim already knows what Siobhan will grow up to be, that he wants the word to start spreading as soon as possible. 

That night, Seb tucks his hands in his pockets and stands in his daughter’s doorway, watching her sleep like he hasn’t since the very first week. Tommy refused to leave, and he’s curled up in the chair, dead to the world, a blanket thrown over him. She’s said enough for him to feel sorry for the kidnappers; Bhan frightens _him_  sometimes, and he has been in love with Jim for almost ten years. The unfamiliar necklace on her bedside table is bloodied at the back, like the chain was snapped against someone’s neck, and he’d seen blood beneath her fingernails before she soaped her hands and rinsed them, fastidious as a cat.

_Sebby?_

Jim’s fingertips rest at the nape of his neck, and Seb breathes out, shaky. The pressure increases, then falls away and is replaced by cool lips. 

_It’s alright, Sebby. Come to bed._

Sebastian obeys orders, always, but he stands a moment more, and Jim doesn’t try to drag him but simply waits, breath soft against Seb’s skin, until Seb’s heart is no longer in his throat and he doesn’t want to just sit on the edge of Siobhan bed and hold her while she sleeps. He knows that given a little more time, their girl would have walked out of their on her own, leaving someone dead or bleeding and the rest too terrified to follow, but that’s not the point and it doesn’t matter, because Seb’s let things slip a little too far in the past year and it’s time to remember what his job is. 

Because Seb’s job is to keep Moriarty safe. 

 _Both_  of them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written off a [prompt from ishouldbedoinghw.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/22824394564/kidnapped-short-siobhan-piece-by-request)
> 
> _would you kidnap Siobhan?  
>  does that REALLY sound like a good idea?_


	13. The O'Doyle Boy

Tommy doesn’t go home much anymore. 

The Morans officially adopted him, six months back, and he remembers his father’s face, closed like a door, when he signed the papers, his mother vaguely bemused and never looking away from where Mr. Moran was leaned up against the wall of the courthouse, fingers tapping against his thigh, restless and distant. 

Seb was the one who actually fills everything out, printing their names neatly (Aileen and Liam O’Doyle, James and Sebastian Moran, Thomas O’Doyle, and it’s that strange, isn’t it, seeing his full name? when they all call him Tommy) and sliding the form across the desk to be notarized after they’ve all signed. 

Things should feel different, he thinks in the car on the way back to the house, Siobhan’s back against the opposite door and her feet tucked beneath his knee, book open on her lap and dark eyes blank and elsewhere. But they don’t. This is his family.

Tommy made his choice a long time ago.

Three out of his six sisters won’t speak to him, Mary and Caitlin and Brigit, the two oldest and the baby (but then Cait hasn’t said a word since he explained about liking men, and she’s no loss) and two of the remaining three look hurt every time he comes round. Fiona (the closest he has to a favorite, nine months younger almost to the day) listened to him with cocked head on the day he left, and said, when he was done,  _Does this mean the farm’s mine?_

If you want it, he’d said, because she’s always wanted it, and Fionne grinned and called him her best brother, and punched him lightly in the arm before vanishing into the old stone barn in pursuit of one parent or another.

He’d watched her go, then hefted his last duffel bag over his shoulder and walked up the road towards home. 

Tommy belongs to the Morans, and no one else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [For boxoftheskyking](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/23266823932/boxoftheskyking-river-by-mountain-man-tommy)
> 
> , who loves Tommy and is my very favorite enabler.


	14. How Fear Came

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first draft of Running in the Family, plus Bonus Information from the first post about Siobhan Moran.

Four months after Jim reappears, and two after they move back to Ireland, Moriarty acquires a child. Seb comes home one day from the farm hand job he always surprises himself by enjoying to see a brown-haired, dark-eyed little girl sitting at the kitchen table, eating bread and jam, and Jim sitting on the counter, swinging his feet and all but bouncing.

"Oh no," says Seb, but "Oh _yes_ ," says Jim, and from that point on they have a daughter. Sebastian never finds out exactly where she sprung from, if Jim bought her or stole her or adopted her or if she simply followed him home all her own, but they call her Siobhan and she seems quite pleased with the situation, which in itself is exceedingly unnerving.

She takes after Jim, and she does it so fast that Seb begins to wonder if they are, somehow, related.

 

\--

 

 

(But it really started from a reblog of a post of a little Dublin girl threatening to blow up a school, with a note as to how it is TOTALLY Jim's kid.)

 

Moriarty put her up to it. Sebastian is a REALLY good dad and Jim makes him crazy with how he goads Siobhan into this sort of thing because she’s a fuckin’ kid, Jimmy, you can’t DO that, but she takes after her daddy and he can’t do a goddamn thing.

 

I just want there to be a world where this happens.

And they move back to Ireland.

And like.

Steal a baby.

And name her after Moriarty's little sister.

(This is my own weird private headcanon about the sister.)

And they use Seb's last name because Jim thinks Siobhan Moriarty has too many syllables and it upsets him.

And Seb is SUCH A GOOD DAD GUYS.

And she grows up just like Jim and Jim is thrilled.

And Seb is like super concerned about it.

But they do alright.

And they're happy--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are you even a little surprised that I originally reblogged [this post](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/18080394562/boxoftheskyking-timetobeadventurous) from [boxoftheskyking](http://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking)?
> 
> _headcanon: accepted_


	15. Father's Day

He teaches her how to sharpen knives, and keep them sharp. Siobhan is a quick study, and Seb regrets this, regrets the fact that he can only hold her attention so long before she masters whatever he has to teach her. In a few years, when her hands are big enough and stronger, Sebastian will put a gun into them, shape her thin shoulders and shift her feet so that she is prepared for the recoil against her small body—and Siobhan will let out that shallow breath that is so like Jim and hit whatever she aims at, and Seb will be so proud it aches a little. 

 

She is his daughter in all the ways that matter. 


	16. Mother's Day

“I tried to stop her, Mr. Moran. I tried. I did.” Tommy looks bruised around the mouth and eyes, but whether she’s been at him or he’s just worn down, he doesn’t know and it doesn’t matter, they’re early, they shouldn’t even be  _home_  for two hours yet. Siobhan is in the next room. Panting like a dog run from wolves, eyes showing white around the edges like a panicked horse, not precisely afraid but right on the edge of losing control—hm.

“Enough,” says Jim, not ungently, and Tommy sucks in a long breath, blinks those shallow blue eyes, and goes silent. He taps a long finger against his mouth, thinking, then gestures carelessly towards the garden. “The tomatoes need weeding. Ask Sebastian to help you, when he gets home.”

The boy looks for a moment like he’s going to protest, gaze pendulum-swinging towards the doorway, towards Siobhan, and his shoulders suggest reluctance. Jim lifts his chin a little, and Tommy doesn’t move, and then Siobhan makes a trapped-animal noise that makes both of them flinch all over. 

“I can help you—” begins Tommy, so like Sebastian in his course unswerving.

“No.” 

Shaved neck bows, short blond hairs catching the sun, and he goes. Jim lets out a long hum with almost a groan at the end of it, and his daughter moans too.

_How bad?_

_Too bad._

_Can you bear it?_

_If I must._

Jim keeps his distance. The risk of being caught and held is high just now, too high. Seb’s not home. The boy is still only fifteen. He has to steer it, steer her.

“Siobhan.” He drops each syllable carefully into the air between them. Dark eyes flicker beneath their lids and do not look at him. “ _Siobhan_.” More of a hiss, this time, on the first letter, and she twists her head and  _glares_ , dull. Jim settles one hand against the tabletop, each fingertip in turn and then his thumb, the palm, the heel, the thin skinned delicacy of his wrist. Siobhan’s breath creaks and stutters in his lungs, then eases. 

They watch each other.

Jim flips his hand over, empty palm, open. 

Siobhan rolls her head on her neck, cracks her jaw sharply, and then groans again, subvocal, before dropping her hand, palm down, to rest over his. Her fingers are cool and very light against pale scars, and unmoving.

Jim nods, small and neat, then digs his fingernails into the soft skin of her wrist, half-moons marks not quite deep enough to bleed. All Siobhan’s muscles go tense, and there is a snarl building somewhere deep in her throat when Jim says, “Focus.”

Her pupils are blown and black, her chin lifted, and Jim grabs her forearm and shakes hard and says it again, “Siobhan,  _focus.”_

Siobhan focuses, jaw a little dropped, and Jim’s voice smoothes out. “Pet. This isn’t ideal.” Or safe, in the long run—no matter. “But you can’t rely on Tommy. Not always. Siobhan.” Her eyes flick to his jawline, his face.  _It has to be you. You alone, angel, my darling girl._ She huffs out a breath, not quite a threat.

Blood pounds just beneath the skin where Jim’s nails dig in.

He waits, watching the big muscle in her neck, and the veins standing out, and when both of them have eased Jim starts to pull away. 

The trapped-animal noise is not voluntary, and Siobhan presses her wrist hard against her mum’s hand, against the careful doled-out pain, expression turned inward, mastering herself, bringing to heel the things she does not yet have words for. Jim sits, impassive, and holds on.

When Seb comes home they are still there. 


	17. Promo Shot

If Jimmy Moran from Dalkey had a publicity shot for his books, this would be it, and Siobhan would have a version of it folded into the man’s wallet she carries, not because of love or sentiment exactly, but because mum is incontrovertible and unavoidable and she will never shake him, ever, as long as she lives and whatever she does.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [From here.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/26420885516/if-jimmy-moran-from-dalkey-had-a-publicity-shot)
> 
>  
> 
> _and if you leaned on her enough she'd look at you with dark calm eyes_  
>  and smile just a little and say  
> Don't be simple  
> of course I loved him  
> But maybe only after he died and it was just her left  
> her and Seb and Tommy


	18. Aftermath

There are things Siobhan doesn’t see, nine years old and out of the house with Tommy, the day Jim tries to kill himself. They are what she never, ever asks about, not the next day, not when she’s grown, not when she’s graying herself and Sebastian can feel the winter in his bones.

Seb lifting Jim, who is painfully terribly delicately thin and bloody, putting him in a tub with four inches of water and sluicing it over his head, draining the tub, filling it again, until Jim is clean. Until when Sebastian lays him into bed and presses a kiss against the skin of his throat he only smells the usual faint iron tang of blood that always hangs around Moriarty, and no more. Seb spending long heartbeats leaned over a bathroom sink that no longer has a mirror above it, chest heaving, jaw clenched.

She never sees it but Siobhan _knows_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [here](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/27097306181/this-is-what-siobhan-doesnt-see-nine-years-old). Art by gatisss.


	19. Perchance to Dream

Siobhan is restless when she sleeps. 

Sebastian thought she might grow out of it, might settle down once she got used to the place, to her small quiet room, to him and the boss, but she doesn’t. It rarely wakes him up because she almost never cries out in her sleep, but Tommy tells him almost casually that Siobhan will snarl softly, turning over and burying her face against the mattress, near-constantly in motion. Sometimes Sebastian wonders where she gets it. Jim sleeps like the dead, and he and Tom are quiet in repose. 

And she never grows out of it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [here.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/30592562992/siobhan-is-restless-when-she-sleeps-sebastian)
> 
> Art by sirviscera.


	20. What Dreams May Come

Siobhan dreams of her mother standing in a river of blood and bone, mouth quirked in something that is a little less than a smile, his eyes almost closed, and she blinks herself awake in darkness and lies still, five years after going home to say goodbye. She swallows, shallow and calm, and Tommy rolls over in his bed across the way. And Siobhan puts out a hand without looking. 

It takes her a long time to fall back asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [here.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/32135481512/rachmaninoffs-jimmy-you-arent-wearing-your)
> 
> From art by rachmaninoffs.


	21. Suited to the Work

“You look better in uniform.” Moran’s mouth is a small quirk upwards but her eyes show nothing at all. The suit is dove-gray, the tie pale gold, the tie-pin her mum’s, silver with the head of a fox; she only wears it, Molly is sure, to watch the way the muscles around Mycroft’s eyes tighten when he sees it. 

(The words  _And even better out of it_  remain unspoken. They are at work. They are professionals.)

“Shut up,” says Molly, lightly, and Moran’s mouth curls up a little more. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [here.](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/37062620024/katzensprotte-anon-requested-femlock)
> 
> From art by katzensprotte.
> 
>  
> 
> _Thirty years later Siobhan comes in on the bass line_


	22. Feud

Moran doesn’t know where Holmes got the coat, but she’s sure the woman wears it on the days she’s out of uniform just to piss Siobhan off, that tiny reminder that she works for and with Molly’s Uncle. Who is before all things her father’s brother. And Holmes’ father is Sherlock. The only time Moran has seem him (from a distance, arguing with Mycroft) he was wearing almost the same bloody coat, swirling it around his body with theatrics that would hardly be acceptable in an actor.

She suspects him of giving this one to Molly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [here,](http://shayvaalski.tumblr.com/post/28628149601/sashkash-got-new-intuous-nibs-today-decided) off art by sashkash.
> 
>  
> 
> Molly Holmes belongs to atrickstertype/vocal_bard.


End file.
